Visit my campaign website!

Ever since I worked in Brussels as a journalist, I've understood just how vital it is to have the right people in place in the European Parliament. I invite you to check out my site to see why I want to be one of them!

Top Clicks

The Iron Lady

Posted by jonathanfryer on Monday, 9th January, 2012

I have never met Margaret Thatcher one-to-one, but I did get a close look at her a few years ago at Roy Jenkins’s Memorial Service, when she arrvied late and swept down the aisle of St Margaret’s Westminster swathed in black and looking as if she was auditioning for a part in the next Harry Potter film. So I got quite a jolt in the opening scene of Phyllida Lloyd’s film ‘The Iron Lady’ this afternoon, when a large but frail old woman goes into a corner shop to buy a pint of milk, because, yes it was her (unrecognised by the man behind the counter or other customers, however) — except that is wasn’t because it was Meryl Streep. The impersonation is uncanny and during the course of the film, as Lady Thatcher, trying to fight off dementia while hallucinating that her dead husband Denis is still around, recalls her political life through the warped prism of her sometimes faulty memory. This is a stunning device, brilliantly executed; in fact the whole film is quite extraordinary and left me emotionally drained. Anyone who has had to deal with someone at close hand slipping into dementia, as I have, will understand the somewhat clueless and panic-stricken looks that cross the face of Carol Thatcher, the daughter (splendidly portrayed by Olivia Colman) and the surreal atmosphere inside the house in Belgravia to which the Thatchers moved after abandoning their suburban experiment in Dulwich. I can understand why some people feel that the film is premature (the lady is still alive, after all) and some will quibble about the histroical inaccuracies and whether it portrays Thatcher in too favourable/too unfavourable (delete as appropriate) a light. But that misses the point. This is an amazing piece of cinema that cries out to be seen. Doubtless Meryl Streep will get a Best Actress Oscar for her performance, and Phyllida Lloyd deserves an Oscar too. But that is also not the point. This is one of those films that moves one profoundly, and however distant one may have felt from Mrs Thatcher the politician, one cannot help but empathise with the eponymous central character in The Iron Lady.